For Kids?

Rating: 5/10 (16 July 2013)

Yikes, I was being given many assurances that this film was the Bees Knees. It was the great new franchise that would have everybody wearing PR t-shirts and buying PR toys. In Asia, probably yes. I really think I gave this film a fair chance at wowing me. And it did for the first 30 minutes or so. The imagery was fantastic, as in Grand Canyon fantastic. Then it was a long, long, touchy feely group exercise with our young cadets. Many people I'm sure will harken back to 1997's Starship Troopers when watching scenes of rivalry between soldiers. All I could think of as these scenes dragged on was how much more edgy director Verhoeven was with similar scenes, and thus far more interesting.
Afterwards, I'm surprised how Del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth, does not make a film like this without being edgy? I think it is that element that prevents this film from appealing to adult audiences. Certainly there is 'grit' in the production design. But all the gouges and chipped paint everywhere was actually a bit too distracting as well. For a military operation, they have no regard whatsoever in the upkeep of their facilities and machines. I certainly can give credit to Del Toro for doing a great job on his first big budget summer tentpole.
But now I will go on about the obvious decision to mask the quality of the effects by having each and every monster vs robot battle take place at night and in the rain. The reason is the same as 1998's Godzilla. Because to sell the size of these 8 story tall creatures, they had to be able to blend in with their surroundings. Since the effects apparently weren't good enough, they get shrouded in murky rainy scenes. Another major aspect to this robot warrior world is the need for the two drivers to psychically link to each other by experiencing each other's traumatic memories (?!). I know what the intention was, to make this a more Avatar-like world where your 'spirit' world must be linked to your physical world. But really, is driving an oversized tank much harder than say, flying a commercial airliner in the near future?
Eventually this kind of story manipulation to get the backstory and weaknesses of each character spelled out failed to get me excited. It started to feel more by-the-numbers screen writing, a complaint I had with Star Trek: Into Darkness. But I was encouraged by the fact that this was not a sequel, and Del Toro is a far more respectable director than Michael Bay. The best feeling I got from this mess was that I would love for Del Toro to direct one of the new Star Wars films. Not that Abrams would do a bad job, but Del Toro brings a dark element (in a disturbed kind of way) to his work. In PR the only hint you get of that is the side character played by Hellboy's Ron Perlman.
I hope this plays well with a younger audience, I just had really nothing to attach to with this world. The big robots were OK, but the fight scenes were not satisfying at all. The monsters were too undefined. What's the exact difference between a 4 and a 5 monster? Those kind of details would be interesting to us adults.